


Sister Of

by Yuval25



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family, Gen, Magic, Muggle Life, Muggles, OC, Siblings, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 16:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11444445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuval25/pseuds/Yuval25
Summary: There was something to be said for going to the zoo with your magic-wielding, strangely-educated, very-far-away-most-of-the-year younger brother.





	Sister Of

**Author's Note:**

> Being an older sister is the best thing ever, but what happens when your little sibling suddenly has magic and goes away to a distant magic school?  
> So, what do you think?

Tammy always knew her brother was special. They had little in common, though their shared love for music came up often in their conversations, and their similar sense of humor, which tended to be sharp and mostly sarcastic, ended up being a source of great closeness and joy.

As the proud older sister, she couldn't help the warmth in her chest every time he achieved something, couldn't stop the smile spreading across her lips when she heard others praise him.

She knew he was special, yes.

But she never expected _this_.

The letter was brought by a normal-looking person, who knocked on their door at five in the afternoon, while she was preparing dinner with her mother. Her father answered the door.

She gave him a confused look when he came into the kitchen a few seconds later and asked her to please call her brother.

Jack was in his room, reading a book that she recognized from her own shelf. That explained its strange disappearance a week before.

"Jack, dad wants you to come downstairs," she said, watching as he sighed and tucked the book back beneath his pillow.

Their guest was waiting for them, smiling and holding a letter in her hands.

The next few minutes passed in a blur, though the words 'magic' and 'wizard' and 'special' seemed to repeat rather a lot. Her brother asked many questions, though never the one Tammy wanted to ask.

"Why?" eventually escaped from her lips, causing the three other people in the living room to look at her.

The woman, who was apparently a school teacher that taught magic, brushed invisible dust from her normal-looking clothes.

"Well, nobody quite knows why they called it Hogwarts. I assume it must have been for a good reason. After all, the founders were all respected, talented witches and wizards," she said kindly.

Tammy wanted to scream. That was not what she had meant. She meant _why_ , why him of all people? Why her little brother? And that tiny, nagging thought, the one she tried to bury beneath all the smiles and compliments and encouragements, asking why not _her_?

She waved goodbye with the rest of her family as the witch disappeared with an abnormal _crack_ that echoed in the air like a bullet.

She knew, at that moment, that her life will change forever.

 

 

Their trip to Diagon Alley had been like something out of a dream. People wearing strange clothes, medieval almost, were hurrying to and fro without pattern. Shops were frequented and books were bought and wands chose Jack and didn't work for Tammy because she wasn't a witch, and, fine, she knew that, but it still made her chest tighten in disappointment for that proof that she would not be joining her brother in his adventures at the distant, magical school he was going to in a little over a month.

She did get a robe, while her brother got a full wardrobe of school uniform – "Standard, of course," according to the witch stabbing pins into the fabric at Jack's sides as he looked at Tammy with a terrified expression that made her want to burst out laughing, barely breathing because he was afraid to move and get prickled with a needle.

She did not understand their form of money. Pounds were exchanged for gold, silver and bronze coins that she couldn't remember the names of, and there were _goblins_ , actual goblins, and a poem carved into the white stone of what turned out to be a bank that made her skin crawl.

She enjoyed lunch, although each and every meal had something she didn't recognize in it. Like toad eyes. But then again, she had heard from her friend Natalie that in France they ate toads as well.

She fell in love with the library, and ended up sending her parents on another trip to the local bank to exchange more pounds into coins so she could purchase 'Magical Objects Hidden in the Muggle World' – she had no idea what the muggle world was, but it sounded interesting – and 'A Thousand Ways to Fly'. She had always wanted to fly.

Leaving Diagon Alley was delayed by an hour when her and Jack caught sight of an ice-cream palace.

It was a good day, and Tammy spent the hours before bed engrossed in a book with her brother lying beside her on the bed, reading his own book about charms and murmuring along the foreign words he read there, while their parents watched with amused, though sad eyes from the doorway.

This felt like the last time they would get to do something like that.

 

 

The day they saw Jack off, Tammy held her brother's hand the entire drive to the train station.

The witch-teacher that had delivered the acceptance letter half a year prior had given them instructions on how to get to their designated platform, however as they stood between platforms nine and ten they all looked in confusion at the pillar that stood there and wondered how painful it would be to collide with a solid wall.

Luckily, a family consisting of two brown-haired parents and an assortment of colorful, undoubtedly adopted four children, all of various ages and one of them carrying a cart with a cage lying sideways at the top of it – was that an _owl_? – helped them through the confusion with knowing smiles and guiding words.

"I don't know…" Jack murmured, scratching his cheek and looking their parents with hesitation in his eyes.

"It's fine, Jack," Tammy hurried to reassure, putting a hand around his shoulders. "I'll go first if you want."

Jack looked at her with so much relief she couldn't help but feel a jolt of warm, happy feeling in her heart. She made him less tense. She did _good_.

Tammy looked at the wall, which looked very much un-pass-through-able, took a deep breath and saluted her little brother, who looked up at her with wide, admiring eyes, before running head-first into the unknown.

 

 

_Dear Mum, Dad and Tammy_ , was written in bold letters across the piece of archaic parchment, tiny drops of ink splattered across the pages as well as smudged imprints of a thumb on the left, upper corner.

_You'll never guess where I am! I am inside a castle. It's huge, and there is a lake and I was on a boat that steered by itself all the way to the castle!_

_The hat told me I was smart and creative and put me in Ravenclaw. Oh, the hat tells us which house we go into. I put it on and it told me things and then shouted RAVENCLAW and everybody cheered. And it singed!_

Tammy rolled her eyes at her brother's misspelling.

_Then we ate and it was all really good!_

_I am in my dorms now. It's nice and Leo from my dorm said I could use his owl to write to you. She's really cool, anyway. She can fly really fast!_

The unexpected bird had originally caused a ruckus to break out in their kitchen, Tammy's mother screaming as her father chased the thing around with a broom he had grabbed from the cupboard. When they realized it was carrying a folded piece of paper, they calmed down and let the offended bird land on the dining table and extend its leg so they could untie the letter, pecking Tammy's father until he placed some bread crumbs in front of it, and took off without waiting for their response to the letter.

_Classes are starting tomorrow. I have Charms and then History of Magic. I bet it's going to be really great!_

_I miss all of you a lot._

_I love you!_

_Jack_

 

 

The letters were few and far-between. Being surrounded by people at all hours and the never ending fascination with magic must have made Jack forget to write at regular intervals.

It was both a relief and a burden when her brother returned home for Christmas. Jack had changed over the last few months, talking on and on about things she didn't understand. He tried to engage her in conversation, but she found herself lost in all the foreign words and concepts, unable to grasp magic. Her parents were much more open to the idea, and Tammy quickly found herself left out.

She knew it wasn't intentional, but it still stung when her rant about her English teacher turned into Jack talking about all his professors in detail, their mom and dad humming attentively as he spoke, completely forgetting her.

Then he was gone, for another few months that only magnified the distance between them.

 

 

Summer vacation was better, in Tammy's opinion. The prolonged closeness had brought back some old jokes and introduced new ones. They shared experiences and laughs and even if it wasn't like it was before, Tammy was still grateful for it.

Jack told her about friends he had made from his 'house'. His house in school was known for wit and brilliance, which Tammy thought fitted her brother well. He was always smart, like her. She was disappointed when she learned that his school didn't have any musical instruments like a piano for him to play. They did have a way of producing music with their wands, though Tammy didn't quite understand it.

The candy Jack had brought over from the magical world was exciting. That was an understatement. It was absolutely thrilling.

"It's moving! Jack!" Tammy squealed as a frog-shaped chocolate figure started hopping around in her room. Jack burst out into a fit of giggles, laughing harder when she jumped away in fright when the _thing_ came near her.

Needless to say, she will never open another one of these boxes again, even if the card she found there _was_ pretty cool, as the figure inside – a stern-faced woman with a black, pointy hat – actually moved.

The flavored-beans were nice, though there had to be some law against snot-flavored candy.

That afternoon, they laughed so hard they didn't even hear it when their mother called for them to tell them dinner was ready.

 

 

There was something to be said for going to the zoo with your magic-wielding, strangely-educated, very-far-away-most-of-the-year younger brother. Or there could have been, if Jack stopped talking for a moment and let someone else utter more than a syllable.

"-really large paws and they make this howling noise when they sense danger to alert the other-"

And it would sounds normal for a few seconds, before-

"-breathe fire! Actual dragons that can fly and as big as a house-"

And Tammy would look at the tiger yawning tiredly through the bars and sigh to herself.

 

 

The first time she rode a broom, as strange as that sounded, she was seventeen and her brother, Jack, was home for the duration of the summer. She had originally been against it. Hovering in the air on a stick didn't seem like much of an appealing idea. After much persuasion and a demonstration of its safety, Tammy agreed to hold onto her brother as he steered the handle this way and that way.

Windswept and on her feet once more fifteen minutes later, she pulled her brother into a tight hug, tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, struggling to take deep breathes that didn't hitch.

"Alright, Tammy?" her brother asked, probably noticing something was not quite right when she didn't let go for a long time.

"Yes," she whispered, burying her face in his shoulder. He had become so tall this year, away at school and far from home.

She drew back with deep regret, wanting to hold on for longer, knowing she was going to lose him for another year in a couple of weeks.

"What do you think you'll do now that school's over?" he asked her as they began walking across the freshly-harvested field back to the house.

She swallowed before she answered, shoving the pain back into the corner of her mind.

"I don't know. Maybe work, or study some more."

Jack hummed. "I can't really see you working for someone else, to be honest."

Tammy bit back a smile. Even after all these years apart, he still knew her better than anyone.

Maybe her brother didn't change all that much, even with all the distance and the magic.

 

 

"Hello?" she pushed the phone between her shoulder and her cheek, narrowly avoiding cutting clean through her finger as she brought down the knife over a set of peeled carrots.

" _Guess who?_ " a most familiar voice, deeper and rougher than she remembered it, answered.

She nearly cut herself again in surprise.

" _Jack_?! I thought you weren't coming home for a few more days!" she exclaimed, a grin replacing her formerly frustrated expression.

Her brother laughed over the line, causing her grin to widen. " _Seventh years are let out a few days before school ends, because we've already had our NEWTs and are done with classes._ "

She set down the knife and put the carrots in a bowl. "I can be at mum and dad's in about two hours."

She pulled the plastic wrap out of a drawer and sealed off the bowl, heading for the refrigerator to store it.

" _I can be at yours in five seconds, if you tell me where you are,_ " he replied.

Her eyes widened. "What? How?"

" _Magic._ "

She rolled her eyes. "Shut up. Seriously, though. How?"

" _Well, it is magic. There's a form of traveling that makes one disappear from one location and appear at another._ "

"Is that safe? It sounds painful."

" _Yes._ "

"I hate you."

" _Location?_ "

She rattled off her address, and true enough, not five seconds later she heard a deafening crack pierce through the air. The noise reminded her of another time, back before all this happened, when a woman brought a letter that changed everything.

 

 

"Jack?" she asked with wide eyes, nearly dropping the stack of letters she just pulled out of the letterbox.

Her brother looked jittery. His eyes darted all over the neighborhood and his robes rather stuck out. Having appeared out of thin air a moment before, he was now clutching her arm and was pulling her into the house with hurry.

"Jack, what-"

"There's no time. You have to pack. I'll explain later."

She followed him as he marched right into her small bedroom, throwing open her closet doors and throwing piles of folded clothes onto the bed.

She stared at him in shock.

"Jack! What are you doing?" she protested. "Stop! Talk to me!" she grabbed his arm.

He froze, looking at her with scared eyes, his whole body shaking.

"He's back," was all he said before he stormed to the hallway. She managed to catch up with him right as he slammed the cupboard beneath the stairs shut, towing a large, green suitcase behind him back into the bedroom.

"Jack, you have to calm down. I don't understand what's going on."

"There's no time," he repeated, tucking all the loose ends of fabric in before closing the suitcase and zipping it shut.

"I can't just leave. I have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow with the application team. There's laundry in the hamper. There's-"

"None of this matters now! We have to go!" his voice was only barely below a shout.

"I'm not going anywhere before you explain," she stated, folding her arms and maintain a stern look in the face of her brother's distress.

Jack pursed his lips and let out what sounded like a held-back scream of frustration and panic.

He paused, coming to stand in front of her. He raised his hands and put them on her shoulders, looking into her eyes.

"Trust me," he said, and she found herself nodding before she made a conscious decision to.

He let her go and she whirled around, bending to reach her nightstand to quickly grab a photograph of her, Jack and their parents on a vacation with the countryside background illuminated with the reds and oranges of sunset. She threw it onto the bed and ran into her bathroom, opening the medicine cabinet and taking a few generic pain-reducing pill bottles, birth control pills, ear-drops and nasal spray. She took the first-aid kit out of the second drawer of the cabinet beneath the sink and threw in all the tampons and sanitary pads she could find. She had no idea for how long she would be gone.

Stumbling back to the bedroom, she saw Jack putting food into nylon bags. She was about to protest against having food on her bed, but Jack started talking before she could.

"I can't tell you where we're going. Mum and dad are already at Heathrow. I told them to catch the first flight out of here. I would have Apparated us all out of here, but I can't Apparate that far," he said while she grabbed her hiking backpack from the lowest drawer of her closet and filled it with the things that didn't fit in the suitcase.

Jack took out his wand, which always left Tammy in a weird place between impressed and baffled, and murmured something that made the suitcase and the bag shrink into earring-sized lumps on the blanket. He put them in his _pocket_.

Tammy shook her head to try and focus. She was always left in a state of shock when he did magic.

"I don't know if this works with muggles, but this is not going to be pleasant. Try to breathe," he instructed, and she just stood there, confused, trying to understand what he meant by that.

He bit his lip, grabbed her arm, and they disappeared with a mighty _crack_!

 

 

Life on the run was tough. There was constant moving, and they never stayed in one place long enough to remember the names of the people around them. Jack kept using magic to hide them and provide for them, which originally alarmed Tammy because she thought they could track them down through those acts of magic before Jack reassured her it was mostly untraceable once the person casting it reached the age of seventeen.

One time when they were hiding at a house with other people – wizards – all huddled together in a small, underground basement, Jack heard something from one of the men and started crying hysterically. Tammy could make out the words 'dead' and 'friend' in his jumbled, gasping speech as he fell into her arms, but hugged him close and told him everything was going to be alright anyway, cradling him like she used to do when he was a baby and her parents let her four year old self calm the crying, teething infant with clumsy hands and off-key humming.

 

 

Tammy never asked why Jack decided to stay in the British isles while their parents rooted down abroad. He still felt the urge to tell her, apparently, because one night when they were lying awake under the stars he shuffled in his sleeping bag to face her and started talking.

"I'm sorry," he said, and she turned her head to look at him. She opened her mouth to protest, but he interrupted her. "Mum and dad... They… I'm so sorry."

She shook her head the best she could while lying down sideways to face him. "I wouldn't have agreed to go with them. Not without you. I would have gone mad worrying about you, anyway," she paused, biting into her lip. Her voice dropped down to a whisper. "I just… I'm scared I'm slowing you down. Putting you in danger. I don’t have magic, Jack. I can't protect you," her voice broke at the end.

"Don't say that. Don't-" he swallowed, looking close to tears. "I couldn't protect… I lied, Tammy. I'm so sorry," he sobbed.

She frowned. "Jack, I don't understand."

"Mum and dad, they never… They didn't make it out of the house, Tammy, before…"

Jack couldn't seem to speak any more. He broke down in a heap of loud sobs, his whole body shaking with them.

Tammy's brain couldn't make sense of what he was saying for a few seconds, before it caught up and she let out a wail. "No!" she screamed, struggling to get out of her sleeping bag, which suddenly felt like it was suffocating her. She was having trouble breathing, and she felt dizzy. "No…"

"I'm sorry!"

The earth spun around her. Her breaths were coming short and rapid.

Then everything went black.

 

 

Standing before the wreckage that used to be her childhood home, knuckles grinding under Jack's crushing hold on her hand, Tammy felt numbness spread through her. Where there had been terror and fear, now remained nothing. She felt empty.

"They didn't…"

In her mind, she was able to finish what Jack could not put in words. They didn't repair the broken structure, didn't rebuild, didn't sell the ground or even cover the mangled pieces and mangled memories. Jack had told her that he had gone straight to her house after finding their parents' slaughtered bodies, and had not had the time to bury them. It was obvious that the bodies have since been removed, but Tammy still felt reluctant to cross the grass-spotted front yard, to step over what used to be their door, to salvage whatever personal items she could find.

But Tammy could see that he brother could not, either, and there was no dilemma.

"Wait here," she heard herself say, and after a few weak pulls, she felt the grip on her hand slacken.

Her brother made a wounded sound as she stepped forward, and she forced herself not to look back at his grief-stricken face.

The house was ruined beyond recognition. Furniture laid broken and burned, glass pieces strewn all across the cracked floor, walls barely even standing anymore. She let her fingers hover over a blackened pearl she recognized from her mother's favored necklace, before she turned around and continued to sift through what must have been the living room. She reached her parents' bedroom and found a pair of reading glasses that had somehow managed to survive the assault, as well as a slightly singed album with pictures from her and Jack's youth. She felt around the splintering closet, eyes barely seeing and mouth still slack from shock, and pulled out a coat that had belonged to her father and several shirts in various degrees of soot. She retrieved the stack of financial papers her parents had told her about before she'd moved out, pulling the box out of where it was tucked under the fake bottom of the closet.

When she finally emerged from the house, Jack was pacing the length of the broken line fence, hands rubbing his face. His wet eyes met hers and he rushed forward to help her balance her findings.

"It's over," he said, but the relief in his tone was shadowed by mourning.

She let him curl an arm around her waist, resting her head on his chest and breath hitching as she finally succumbed to the sobs and tears. Jack dropped a kiss on her head, breathing in her hair before he Apparated them away from there.

 

 

"Uncle Jack!" the child cried in delight, abandoning her job of minding the chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven in favor of throwing herself into the arms of her favorite uncle.

"Hi, little miracle. Where's your mum?" Jack asked, giving the girl a hug before placing her back on the ground.

"Right here," Tammy answered from where she'd been watching, hip leaning against the kitchen counter. "What's your face doing in my house?"

"She's mean," Jack whispered to Diane, who giggled.

"I'm cooking," Tammy told the pair with a glare.

"You're burning the cookies," Jack corrected her.

"Oh, sorry!" Diane whirled and skidded to the oven.

Jack raised his eyebrows, and Tammy sighed in response. "Her best friend forever-"

"In the whole wide world," Diane added from her crouch near the oven.

"-broke her clavicle and Didi here brilliantly suggested we bake her cookies," Tammy finished, feeling proud and a bit amazed at how kind her daughter is.

"Why cookies?" Jack asked.

"It's chocolate," Diane answers, the _'duh'_ evident in her tone.

"Oh, of course," Jack chuckled, reaching for the oven mittens and helping Diane get the charred cookies out. Tammy had to pull the girl back so she wouldn't get hit by the heat wave when Jack eased the oven door open.

Her brother set the pan on the cold stove, and Tammy winced at the poor state of the batch. She looked down and saw her daughter pouting at the ruined cookies.

"Can you fix it?" Diane asked Jack, eyes big and watery.

Jack gave a quick nod, and Tammy watched in amazement – she still hadn't gotten used to the whole magic thing – as he pulled out his wand from his jacket pocket and murmured a few words in Latin, swishing the wood in an up and down motion through the air as the cookies returned to the desirable state.

Tammy grabbed one from the center of the pan, biting into it.

"Hey!" Diane called, and Jack barked out a laugh and reached for his own cookie. "Hey! Make your own!"

"I'm just checking to see if it's poisoned," Tammy explained, wiping crumbs off the sides of her mouth.

"Me too," Jack added. "Maybe the others are poisoned. We should check all of them," he suggested.

Tammy nodded, holding back the laughter as her daughter's eyes widened.

"Can't you check it with your magic?" she asked her uncle.

Jack hummed contemplatively, rubbing his chin as he chewed. "Probably. There has to be some way of doing that."

"Wicked," Diane smiled, revealing a gap where her tooth had fallen off a month ago. It had been quite dramatic, too.

"Unnecessary," Tammy sighed, reaching up to retrieve a colorful round cookie tin she hadn't found use for from the top kitchen cabinet.

" _I_ think it's cool," Diane said.

"Thanks, miracle," Jack answered.

Tammy arranged the cookies in the tin, before she closed it and handed it to Diane.

"Well, since you're already here, you might as well pop us over to the hospital."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Even _I_ can't stand Apparating, and I'm a wizard. How can you willingly choose it over driving?"

"Traffic is hell at this hour. And try giving birth, I assure you that's way more painful."

Diane shrugged. "I don't mind it."

"She gets car sick, remember?"

"Right," Jack said, taking a huge breath. "Fine, then. Got everything you need?"

"Let me just grab my coat. Didi, you got yours?"

Diane gave a nod and picked her stylish neon-pink sweatshirt up from the kitchen chair it had been slung over.

Tammy rushed to the coat hanger at the door and paused for a moment. She brought her father's coat to her nose and breathed it in. Any smell of her parent had completely vanished in the six months she and her brother had been on the run, but the phantom musk and ting of garden soil was so real it made her eyes sting. She wiped at the tears that managed to escape, and took a deep breath to compose herself, before walking back to her family.

"All set?" Jack asked, and she could see in his eyes that he understood. He knew her better than anyone, still.

Those six months, running from everyone and everything, had left their mark on both siblings. The shared trauma had brought them closer together, since only they could relate to what they'd been through.

He knew she was thinking of their father, and that she was barely hanging on to the mask of happiness she'd put on for her daughter right now, just like he knew that the reason she had broken things off with her sorry excuse for a husband had been because he'd believed the terrorists attacks on the population of London ten years ago had been a political trick to make the prime minister more appealing to the public, because he'd taught that bullshit to their daughter, because he'd laughed in her face when she'd told him that her parents were murdered in those attacks.

He knew her, just like she knew him, just like she knew that the reason he hadn't had a steady girlfriend since the Run was his inability to trust anyone, his inability to be vulnerable. He'd almost killed his first attempt at a relationship, Julie, after she'd tried to hug him from behind. He hadn't forgiven himself for that. Tammy had tried to convince him to talk to someone, but he'd only smiled at her bitterly and said that he couldn't talk to anyone in the muggle world, and that any therapist in the magical world still standing, was probably more mentally scarred than he was after that fiasco at St. Mungo's.

She hadn't told Diane everything, but she had told her that her grandparents died in the terrorist attacks, that she and Jack went on a road trip afterwards and slept under the stars – she never told her how cold it had been sleeping on the bare ground of the prickly pine forest, or how at every crunch of a leaf, every hoot of a bird, every tingle of the wind against the hair on her arms, Tammy had felt her sanity slowly slipping out of her grasp – and that Jack was a wizard.

It had been hard to explain to a six year old why she couldn't tell her friends that her uncle could make things fly. Her brother was brilliant with kids, though, and so he had only needed to smile mischievously at the girl from where he sat on one of those ridiculous miniature plastic chairs at Diane's drawing table in the corner of the living room, and tell her that superheroes couldn't operate under a spotlight and that as a secret-keeper, she had to pinkie-swear to help him continue saving the world incognito. It had all been quite impressive, really. Especially when Diane had rolled her eyes at the speech – she was Tammy's daughter, all right – and kissed Jack's cheek, ignoring the offered pinkie in favor of claiming that since she was Jack's secret-keeper now, they had to get married. Actually, it had all been quite alarming. And endlessly amusing.

It was probably Tammy's fault that Diane clung to Jack so much. The absence of a father figure forced Jack to take some of that weight, and while he had assured Tammy he was doing this willingly, she still felt guilty for holding him back from living his own life. He was so smitten with his niece, since the moment she was born, really, that he often put his own life on hold for them. Tammy was grateful for it, though. God knew she couldn't have done it alone.

Tammy hoped that she'd managed to fill in the spaces that her husband had created when he'd left them. Being an orphan… she could not handle the thought of her daughter suffering through the same loss. Tammy never remarried, and Jack couldn't keep a girlfriend. It was just them, like it had always been. It had always felt like it'd been Jack and her against the world. Now with Diane, firmly on the side of 'Jack and her', their tiny family unit felt complete and Tammy would fight tooth, nail and magic against anyone who dared to compromise the tentative peace she had built from the ruins of her and Jack's personal tragedy.

 

 

"Oh, _hell_ no!" Tammy slammed the door in the man's face.

Diane stood half-hidden by the wall separating the kitchen and the dining room from the living room-workspace region, highlight-colored paper crown perched on her head and eyes wide as she gave Tammy the 'Mum is crazy, proceed with caution' look she had adopted from prolonged exposure to Jack.

 "Mrs. Palmer-"

"Yo no soy Mrs. Palmer!" Tammy growled at the closed door.

"-I only wish to give this letter to-"

" _Yo no soy Mrs. Palmer!_ "

"-your daughter. I will explain everyth-"

She wrenched the door open, and something small and metal dropped to the floor. "No."

"There is nothing to be afraid of, I assure y-"

"You can tell however the headmaster is these days that I appreciate the thought, but no thank you. Get the _hell_ off my porch." She glared at the denim-and-wool clad stranger, who took a step back in surprise.

"So you know. If so, you must realize that your daughter needs to learn to control her pow-"

"Yeah, yeah. Hold that thought."

Tammy slammed the door again, though this time it didn't stay closed – she probably broke something in the latch – and she shoved the small metal chain into the lock to keep it somewhat in place.

She gave her daughter pat on the head before she fished the phone out of her long-skirt pocket, speed dialing number 1#.

"Alright, Tam?" her brother answered after barely two rings.

"Yeah, listen," she started, voice slightly trembling. She cupped the back of her daughter's head and pulled it towards her stomach, and Diane took the hint and stepped forward to hug her mother, burying her face in her shirt. Tammy smiled shakily. "One of yours just showed up at my door, and he says he has a letter to give to Didi. Can you pop over?"

She heard his breath hitch. "Give me fifteen seconds," he said in reply, and hung up.

True to his word, fifteen seconds later the sound of a car backfiring cracked through the house, and Jack stood there in his pajamas, hair ruffled and toothpaste on the side of his mouth. He looked at Tammy and Diane, the latter in particular.

"You're-" he began.

"Don’t," Tammy cut him off. She couldn't handle this right now. She couldn't handle the implications. She couldn't handle Diane disappearing on her, like Jack had when they were children. She just couldn't.

"Is he outside?" he backpedaled. Tammy appreciated it.

She nodded, clutching her daughter tighter against her. Diane let out a quiet huff, but her grip on the back of Tammy's shirt didn't waiver.

Jack struggled with the chain on the door for a moment before he took out his wand and made the lock vanish. Tammy watched with a slack jaw the broken piece that had fallen from the door latch earlier rearranged itself into the slot. Jiggling the door handle a couple of times, Jack gave a satisfied nod and opened the door, stepping outside. He closed the door behind him.

"Mum?" Diane mumbled into Tammy's stomach.

"It's okay, baby," Tammy weaved her fingers in Diane's hair, stroking gently.

It wasn't.


End file.
